The second quarter start comes after a delay of the financial close on the project by the South African Energy Department.
CSP Today's Tom Nevin reports the start date of the 50 MW parabolic trough installation on the Orange River near Groblershoop was originally expected to by 4 March, but it was pushed back to 22 April due to the financial close postponement of Round 2 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP), affecting all projects in the programme.
Nevin quotes Pravashin Govender, project director of consortium leader ACWA Power Africa Holdings, as saying the project sets new standards in that it incorporates nine hours of storage “effectively, on a good day, pretty much a base-load operation.”
The Bokpoort CSP plant was originally designed for a net capacity of 75 MW.
The REEIPPP RFP released on 3 August 2011 provided an allocation of 200 MW of CSP with a maximum capacity limit of 100 MW per project.
The project was not submitted in the first procurement phase where Abengoa Solar was awarded 150 MW and in order to remain compliant with the remaining capacity for the second phase Bokpoort's capacity was reduced to 50 MW.
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